Abstract

Indian tribes and U.S. states often find themselves at the bargaining table, often negotiating "compacts" to govern gaming operations on tribal lands. The operational success of the Pequot gaming operation in Connecticut, Foxwoods, and the substantial revenue shared with Connecticut have become almost mythical in nature, with other states often misunderstanding the lessons of the Foxwoods experience. The real story behind the Pequot gaming compact, however, is one of strategic negotiation and the leveraging of tribal sovereignty into economic opportunity. By examining the sovereign nature of tribal governments, the history of tribal sovereignty, the origins of Indian gaming, the legal framework that governs tribal gaming activities, as well as an analytic approach to negotiations, this paper explains the Foxwoods deal and its implications for tribal-state compacting in the face of changing circumstances, both within and outside of the gaming context.

More from the Author

'Negotiation analysis' seeks to develop prescriptive theory and useful advice for negotiators and third parties. It generally emphasizes the parties' underlying interests, alternatives to negotiated agreement, approaches to productively manage the inherent tension between competitive actions to 'claim' value individually and cooperative ones to 'create' value jointly, as well as efforts to change perceptions of the game itself. Since advice to one side does not necessarily presume the full game-theoretic rationality of the other side(s), negotiation analysts often draw on the findings of behavioral scientists and experimental economists. Further, this approach does not generally assume that all the elements of the 'game' are common knowledge. It tends to de-emphasize the application of game-theoretic solution concepts or efforts to find unique equilibrium outcomes. Instead, to evaluate possible strategies and tactics, negotiation analysts generally focus on changes in perceptions of the 'zone of possible agreement' and the (subjective) distribution of possible negotiated outcomes conditional on various actions. It has been used to develop prescriptive advice for the simplest bilateral negotiations between monolithic parties, for negotiations through agents or with linked 'internal' and 'external' aspects, for negotiations in hierarchies and networks, as well as for more complex coalitional interactions.

Complex, multiparty negotiations are often analyzed as principals negotiating through agents, as two-level games (Putnam 1988), or in coalitional terms. The relatively new concept of a "multi-front negotiation campaign" (Sebenius 2010, Lax and Sebenius, 2012) offers an analytic approach that may enjoy descriptive and prescriptive advantages over more traditional approaches that focus on a specific negotiation as the unit of analysis. The efforts of Singapore Ambassador-At-Large Tommy Koh to negotiate the United States-Singapore Free Trade agreement serve as an extended case study of a complex, multiparty negotiation that illustrates and further elaborates the concept of a negotiation campaign.

Following a brief summary of Henry A. Kissinger's career, this case describes three of his most pivotal negotiations: the historic establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, the easing of geopolitical tension with the Soviet Union, symbolized by the signing of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty ("SALT I"), and the mediation of the agreement on Sinai disengagement between Egypt and Israel. An appendix lists other important negotiations in which Kissinger played key roles.